Architecturally speaking, what will the bust leave us? Woolworth, Cunard, Standard Oil—their buildings stand even if their companies didn't. What do we get this go-around? Media- and finance-subsidized glass and steel, pretty much.

New York's Intelligencer ponders this question today, and the answer is sorta... depressing.

We're left with (see above) the starkness of the gaudy-seeming Time Warner Center, the rented-out New York Times, soon-crumbling Condé Nast, and forever embarrassed Lehman Brothers buildings that already feel like modernist ruins. They're like the monolith in 2001. Scary and functional and Now, but now that Now is over, it's OK to just come out to say it: In their own way, they're all kinda ugly. And that's too bad.

Compare them to the classically elegant Woolworth, Chrysler, Standard Oil, and Cunard edifices (below) that were crafted for beauty's sake, pure and simple: